Women’s NCAA Tournament - Agents of Innovation from the Finals

Yahoo Sports women’s college basketball analyst Cassandra Negley looks at the players who found innovative ways to lead their teams to Final Four success and ultimate NCAA tournament victory.

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CASSANDRA NEGLEY: This is Cassandra Negley with Yahoo Sports, and it is time to highlight the players who found innovative ways to lead their teams to victory during this year's NCAA Women's Tournament. Let's take a look at our Agents of Innovation, brought to you by Invesco QQQ.

LSU graduate guard Jasmine Carson was a perfect example of someone finding an innovative way to lead their team to victory. She went from a bench player who scored 11 points in the entire tournament to an all-tournament team status with 21 points in the first half of LSU's win over Iowa in the national championship game.

She was ready for her chance when the starters got into foul trouble, and she hit four 3-pointers in that first half. She was 7 of 7 overall and gave the team an early edge. Kim Mulkey calls her the second-best pure shooter she's coached. It was the graduate student's final career game in college. She told us afterwards that she didn't have anything to lose. It was the last game of her career and, she said, she ended it the right way.

On the other side of that championship game, let's look at Iowa senior Gabbie Marshall and what she did for the Hawkeyes in the Final Four. Now Iowa reached the Final Four for the first time since 1993, a 30-year stretch. And they upset the powerhouse South Carolina Gamecocks in the Final Four in a huge upset. Caitlin Clark's offense was incredible.

But defensively, Iowa locked in to win that game, and it was led by Marshall. She gave up 18 points to Zia Cook in the first half but kept her to 6 in the second half, as Iowa did enough to advance. Iowa players commended Marshall's defensive intensity for helping them be energized on the defensive end.

Head Coach Lisa Bluder was asked about the, quote, "great defense." She laughed and said great might be a strong word. But Marshall and her crew did plenty defensively to advance to that national championship game, the first that they have played in their program's history. Thanks for watching Yahoo Sports Women's Tournament coverage, brought to you by Invesco QQQ, the official ETF of the NCAA.